


In Somnis Veritas

by cassandra_leeds (The_Circadian)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dark, Fallen Angel Castiel (Supernatural), Heavy Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:01:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27520417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Circadian/pseuds/cassandra_leeds
Summary: After Sam jumps into Hell and Dean has fallen into a normal life with Lisa, Castiel, now human, finds Dean. It's a runaway love story that goes nowhere good fast.Takes place following the Season 5 Finale. Spoilers through 6x20Originally posted on LJ long ago.IN DEPTH CONTENT WARNINGS AND ENDING SPOILERS IN ENDNOTES.Please use them first if you are concerned. This one is heavy.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Kudos: 13





	In Somnis Veritas

In the end, it begins again another way.

Dean tells himself Castiel made the choice. Dean didn’t give him a literal ultimatum. He never forced anything. He tells himself over and over as he lies awake that it wasn’t him, that the night he first leaned in and kissed him in that alley, he wasn’t telling him to choose. But he sees it that way anyway this early in the morning – sees a gun pressed to Cas’ temple in his dreams, hears the words _choose me, choose me, stay_ pleading deep in his chest. And in those empty early hours he hates himself and loves Cas more than ever.

In the early mornings, he’s in more than one place. He’s lived more than one life.

Half awake, he doesn’t know at first who’s under his hand when he turns over.

Dreaming is new to Cas, Dean knows it. He looks over beside him to see Castiel on his back, moonlit and pensive, long fingers splayed against the skin of his chest, as his eyes scan above him, trying to find the place where the dream stopped and waking life began. Trying to make sense of the traces left behind.

“It’s gone so fast,” he mutters, “There were crows.”

Dean adjusts himself to his side to face him, sheets pulling over Castiel’s hips as Dean shifts. Castiel’s face winces slightly in frustration. Dean breathes deep as Castiel looks up and waits for Dean to say something.

“It was a dream, Cas.”

Castiel shakes his head, the faint moonlight from outside the window icing the edges of his features, wanting more from him. “I know that.”

Dean finally pulls him in and Castiel presses his cheek to Dean’s shoulder. Cas was once cold to Dean’s touch, he didn’t always thrum with a living pulse the way he does now. He didn’t always have a smell. Dean is still getting used to it, holding a brand new person.

“What then?” Dean asks.

Castiel is relaxed against him now, breathing deepening, “I don’t know. Why? Why is it there?”

An uneasy feeling passes through Dean quite suddenly, bisecting the peace of the moment. A sense of wrongness. Of things not projecting into his reality correctly.

More and more often he hopes he’s not going crazy. Things don’t fit like they used to.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” Cas says finally.

And Dean confesses, “I know.”

Castiel had only come back when Dean had finally really given up.

Sam was gone, and even with the family Dean had now to fill the void, it wasn’t enough. Soccer matches with Ben, his new job, nights with Lisa. Lisa was sweet. She wanted to help so badly. But even with her willingness to do anything, there was still a Sam shaped hole in Dean’s heart, and Cas leaving so soon after was almost too much.

Leaving Bobby to his life, and finding himself in Lisa’s arms on her doorstep that night, it really hit him just how alone he was. He had no one who had any idea what his life had been like, who had seen what he’d seen, or knew who he really was. He’d cried. He cried when Lisa led him to her bed and held him tight, her small body warm, pressed to his back.

There were months of holding onto hope that suddenly Sam would reappear, really reappear, not the flashes he’d see of him everywhere, that he’d have his real home back, his brother and an angel who awkwardly let him kiss him once - the two people who had ever been his match. The two people who repaid the love in full.

Dean surprised himself. He moved on. He got a job, stopped drinking every night, and eventually he stopped being angry at both of them for abandoning him to this life. This normal fucking life. Making love to Lisa. Helping Ben with his homework. He’d even learned to cook. And he began to think bitterly, that maybe he’d be okay. Maybe he’d make this work. If he still saw Sam, he told himself far better men than him had lived good lives with PTSD. If he sometimes thought of Cas when he was deep in Lisa, he forgave himself.

A Thursday found Dean in his kitchen with his feet covered in milk and Cheerios, glass bowl shattered on the tile below. Of all the hallucinations he expected to see that day, Castiel was not one of them, and especially nothing like this.

Cas was seated at the kitchen table, pale and shivering, his trenchcoat dirty and torn. And something else - something Dean couldn’t put his finger on it at first, then realized as it became clearer, that he really didn’t want to. But it was there in the energy between them and Dean knew deep down: Castiel wasn’t the terrifying presence in a room he always had been. Even his stare lacked the silencing heaviness it held once, a stare that had leveled Dean to the ground over and over. Now those eyes held resigned weariness, real exhaustion.

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean steadied himself back against the edge of the nearest counter, cold through the back of his boxers and under his palm. “Cas…”

Castiel met his gaze, defeated.

“Are you…” Dean started. “What are you doing here?”

He would be lying if he said he hadn’t dreamed of this moment, back when he was still hoping for his life to go back to the way it had been two years ago with exceptions, waiting for God to push the magic reset button for his life – a new and improved past – because he deserved better, they all did. Dammit, God owed it to them.

Sam had done what he had to do. So had Dean. And Cas had left.

Cas had just left.

In dreams, this moment with Cas had been lived a million times, a million different ways, and ended in pleading, blood, often sex. Justice and forgiveness. And now here he was. And Dean had nothing to say. Hell, he was angry, but the worry outweighed it.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Castiel looked around the room, anywhere but Dean, and then buried his hands in his pockets.

It quite suddenly hit Dean that they were alone. The house was empty with Ben at school and Lisa at work. And before he could stop himself he was pulling Cas out of his chair. The intention was to shake him, he doesn’t know why or how he managed to turn it into a kiss. He can’t place when he started weeping. It was better than the first time. It was better than anything he’d had in so long.

Up on Lisa’s and Dean’s bed, on a bed that was an almost-real life now broken, Dean sank deep into Cas for the first time, felt the flex of his body below him, heard the first soft cries of human need fall from his mouth, and kissed him until his own lips were numb, thrust into him until for a moment he couldn’t remember ever being alone. Couldn’t hear the goodbyes in everything, everywhere.

Castiel came with a ragged shout under him, tensing and then sucking in his breath, exhaling a lost mournful sound, a small sob as Dean kissed his face and pushed tears back and into Castiel’s hair.

Dean left a note. He hated doing it, but knew deep down he couldn’t face Lisa. He’d lied. He’d lied coming into their home and thinking he could be like anyone else. The man he’d molded himself into with her and Ben had disappeared as soon as he’d laid eyes on Cas in their kitchen. He wasn’t Lisa and Ben’s Dean anymore, and he regretted it because it meant he had to hurt them.

Dean cleaned up the bowl in the kitchen. Castiel ate a bowl of cereal with a look on his face that nearly mirrored the one of arousal he’d worn an hour before. Dean wondered if this might have been Castiel’s first meal and wished he could have given him something a little more substantial. Castiel seemed more than content though.

Dean dressed Castiel in a clean pair of his clothes, packed a bag for each of them, and buried his gun in the clothes. Castiel watched him distantly, followed him to the garage where Dean pulled the tarp off of the Impala, fingers running briefly over the driver’s side door handle before opening it and throwing the bags in the backseat. Dean slid in and Castiel walked around to the passenger side, hesitated, and Dean was actually glad of it because he needed a minute too. Sam’s spot being occupied by Castiel in this way, that strangely familiar feeling of being partners and outsiders, was suddenly painful and odd with someone else. And it took a moment for Dean to look over and nod, adjust himself to the idea that he would now have a fallen angel for a copilot, for as long as Cas chose to be anyway.

They drove for hours in silence, thoughts a blur, the world suddenly a soft and high flurry of never-ending notes, roads leading anywhere again.

But through all the sweetness, the feeling of finally breathing, there was a bitter taste on Dean’s tongue. It was close to guilt, though he knew staying would have been worse in the long run for all of them.

“You’ll miss them.”

Castiel said, watched Dean looking beyond the expanse of road as they headed out into country.

Dean nodded. “Yeah.”

Castiel inspected each motel they stayed in, pushed the shower curtains from one side to the other, and bounced as he sat on the beds. Dean kissed him with the lights off, flipped him over, stared anywhere but the empty bed beside them, his face pressed into Cas’ back. He rode him loudly, let his shouts fill the room until his cries quieted as he got close to the edge, sucked back his moans to hear the sounds Castiel muffled with his arm, surprised gasps and baffled groans. Dean mouthed at and then bit down on Cas’ shoulder blade, made an angel scream with pleasure for the first time in his life.

Castiel cuddles, which Dean hadn’t expected. It’s a tentative thing, though not over thought. He’s suddenly against Dean’s side as they lie in bed, afternoon sun seeping through the curtains. As Dean ignores his phone ringing, but won’t turn it off either.

They aren’t hunting, though Dean wants to kill something. They’re borrowing time before– Dean’s not sure. He has to get a job? He has to find them a place? Until Castiel decides he wants another life with someone who isn’t callous and too quiet? He wants to kill something. He wants to hunt, but he knows it will just leave him hungry for the big fish that took his brother. He’s not beheading vampires, or stabbing tricksters to take the edge off, or burning bodies, salt and accelerant flavoring the air, leaving his hands sticky. The only thing he’s smothering now is hope, and he’s getting comfortable with that. There is a fear in all of these things that Dean knows is real. He wants to kill that too.

Castiel has started smoking. Dean doesn’t know where he got the notion it was a good idea, but he lights up like he’s been doing it for a while. Dean doesn’t ask how long he’s been here, but he wonders. He wonders now how long it took for Castiel to come to him. The smoke looks wrong coming out of his mouth – a mouth that Dean has seen blood, come, and light spill out of. For some reason, all of those seemed fine.

There’s something wrong about it – watching the smoke drift from between his lips and touch around his face, silhouetted and lovely by the open door, something off in the way Castiel slouches in the chair and holds his breath, letting it out with the need for oxygen. New needs, new addictions. It’s wrong.

But then again, none of the things they’ve done are right or really constitute as responsible decisions. Dean doesn’t smoke. One of the few times Dean had actually been scared John would hit him was when he found him smoking at fifteen. _I bust my ass to keep you safe so you can kill yourself with this crap? I catch you at it again, I’ll kill you._ Dean drinks though. He drinks more than enough.

Dean starts noticing their painkillers disappearing.

It’s Castiel’s body now. When Dean isn’t inside Cas, he’s drinking himself to sleep. So who is he to judge?

Until he comes home from making a fresh set of fake credit cards and finds Cas crumpled behind the toilet in the dark, unresponsive.

“Cas, dammit, Cas?” Dean’s ears are buzzing as he fumbles with him in the dark, picks Cas up and lies him down, fully clothed, in the shower. “Son of a bitch, come on. Come back.”

He turns on the cold which sprays half of him first, but then hits Cas’ face and chest and Castiel spasms with a choking sound, gags and groans.

“Jesus Christ, Cas,” he breathes, hands all over Cas’ face, wiping sick off of it. He looks like someone else, muscles all slack, skin pale. “What did you do?” but he’s not responding. Dean doesn’t realize he’s shaking him until he knocks Castiel’s head back against the tile and Castiel makes a low sound of pain, lifts his arms to push Dean off.

The hospital is too air conditioned. Dean’s shivering in the emergency room, adrenaline and fear and the cold all adding up to muscles that won’t stop trembling even when he holds them.

Dean can deal with stitching someone up, pulling out a bullet, but he’s at a loss when it came to this. Waiting on others to fix things.

He’s suddenly pressed under the heavy reality that this was all he got – this was it. All of it. Castiel in another room, pills being pumped out of his guts. Just Cas. And his life and his car - the empty echo of Sam always filling a part of her Dean could feel right in the back of his skull.

But really, bare bones, it was just them now. If Castiel couldn’t take care of himself, Dean was going to have to do it for him. Because he’s done alone and he’s done the life where no one knew who he was. He’d done it and almost died from it. At least it was better to be honest just by being with who you’re with. At least the death coming was a true one.

Castiel stays overnight at the hospital, conscious but not talking. He looks so human it hurts. Dean sits with him in silence and doesn’t say anything either, every so often watches the drip of the I.V., watches Castiel finally sleep.

The next day they’re on the road again. More silence. The questions that Dean has had in his chest about whether Cas meant for this to happen are heavy and dense. Too dense to expel. And Castiel is far away from him. He’s sitting there and Dean feels like a cord has snapped from between them.

Dean calls Bobby at a rest stop, one eye on the car where Castiel is inspecting the cassettes with little enthusiasm. The last time Dean spoke with Bobby was soon right after he left Lisa. Dean had asked if Bobby knew any jobs and then had looked over at Castiel flicking his lighter absently. Dean had interrupted himself and told Bobby nevermind, but told him they’d be in touch and hung up, Bobby’s “we?” cut short.

Dean’s out of answers now and Bobby’s been trying to reach him for weeks.

He takes the three minutes of swearing and cursing. And then he drops the bomb.

“Cas?”

“Yeah, since October.” Dean rubs his hairline.

There’s a long pause where he hears Bobby fighting with himself over whether he should investigate what that means or rage more at Dean for not saying so last time they spoke. He huffs out a breath. “And?”

Dean looks back at the car where Cas has gotten out and is leaning against the side of her.

“He’s,” and Dean stops as he looks over at Cas. Something icy washes down his spine at the sight. Cas doesn’t look like the Castiel that Bobby last saw. He’s a different creature now, and Dean tries very hard to not think about the Cas that might have been that Zachariah had shown Dean from 2014. “He’s human. Close enough anyway.”

The line is silent. “Bobby?”

“Did you have anything to do with it?”

Dean bites his lip. He suddenly feels guilty as hell. “No.”

Bobby lets them stay in his guest room. Dean goes out and buys him groceries and a pint of bourbon as a thank you. When he gets back Castiel is upstairs. Dean climbs half way up the stairs to see he’s snoring softly in bed.

Bobby’s waiting in the kitchen and Dean sets down the groceries and waits for the talk he knows is coming.

But Bobby doesn’t say anything for a while and when Dean finally moves to put away the things in the grocery bags, Bobby lifts his hand without looking up. “Bring that whiskey over here, you didn’t buy it to put it away.”

Dean brings it over with two glasses. Might as well get this over with. The man is taking them in. Always taking him in when shit hits the fan. And Bobby should know what’s happened. That’s fair.

“Where do you want me to start?” Dean says and pours a shot for himself, one for Bobby, and Bobby takes the bottle out of Dean’s hands, pours himself an extra finger.

“How about the point where you up and disappeared from the map for two months?” Bobby growls. “Let’s start there.”

Dean takes a deep breath and tells him. He tells him almost everything. He leaves out the sex. He leaves out how Castiel has been the only piece of his life from before that doesn’t pity him so he’s hoping like hell he doesn’t figure out how fucked up Dean is now, how he’s not capable of taking care of another person all the time. How Cas is one of the only things at this point that keeps him breathing and eating so he better not leave. Because in the back of his mind Dean still has a plan, if he can’t find a way to Sam, to find a way to Hell so he can fall in too.

He needs Cas. He needs him a little bit longer, for however long that is. He can stretch that little bit for years if he needs to.

Bobby watches him after he pauses. “He was nabbing pills. I think he saved them up and… actually I don’t know about that.” Dean shrugs, looks down into the amber liquor in his glass. “I wasn’t exactly with the living much for a while there.”

“You think he tried to kill himself?”

“I don’t know,” Dean says defeated. “I’m not sure he’d tell me if I asked him.”

“You haven’t?” Bobby scolds in a hushed voice.

“No.” Dean speaks softer, suddenly very aware of the quiet of the house, Cas upstairs, door open.

Bobby shakes his head. “You better find that out.” Bobby tilts his head forward just slightly. “He’s in bad shape. Anyone can see that. But so are you, Dean. No one going through what you’re going through is going to be a good suicide watch.”

Dean stares at the wood on the table, the grains of it. The whiskey is burning his stomach.

“Dean, I need to know,” Bobby says, leaning over the table.

“What, you gonna put him in the panic room?” Dean exclaims and pushes back from the table, getting up.

Bobby stands and picks up the glasses, takes them to the sink. As Dean leaves he hears Bobby mutter, “It was a thought.”

Castiel is still sleeping when Dean comes up the stairs and he moans low and arches up when Dean slides next to him. Murmurs his name through a grimace, eyes squeezed shut, “I don’t like them. I don’t like them. Dreams.” He finds Dean’s hand and moves it down to his groin and lets go once Dean starts to rub. Cas grabs at his shirt. “I don’t want them.” A gasp and a sob as his hips roll up to meet Dean’s grip. “Make them stop.”

Castiel manages to hold down all of dinner that night and falls asleep.

Dean sits on the stairs for hours and then finally after walking around the kitchen twice gets into his car and drives.

He turns onto the closest highway and feels the speed push him back into the embrace of the seat, feels the heater, legos rattling away inside her, place him in the extra space of the car without Sam.

He turns up the volume for AC/DC. For a minute, he pretends. For more than a minute. For a good three hours Dean pretends he’s twenty six again. He goes to a bar, early comers and the underaged drinking timidly amidst the regulars. Dean flirts, he hits on everything pretty that moves, and after just about closing the deal with a giggly girl that looks like a teenage Isabella Rossilini, he skips out of that bar and drives, still mildly tipsy, to the next town over. He finds an all-night diner, has a slice of pecan pie, looks over the local paper for suspicious news, and then takes out his phone and flips through to Sam’s cell.

He’s twenty six again and worried about Sam at Stanford. His stomach goes sour, pecan pie fighting to come back up. He clings to it, the familiar feeling from a life and a half ago. He remembers the hesitation, the weight of his finger over the send button. And he feels the questions, the unborn conversations that would plague him then at 2 AM on nights like this: How’s it going? Yeah, a girlfriend? Yeah, Dad’s okay, he had a run in with a rugaru a few months back, but all healed now. Yeah, I still kept all your crappy post-emo tapes in the trunk, you should get em back one of these days.

No, I’m okay. I’m doing fine really. You?

Dean pushes down send and puts the phone to his ear. He waits. Could heaven let him speak to Sam? Could they give him that if he had faith? If he prayed would this call connect to Sam. Would Dean hear him screaming in Hell?

Dean’s outside puking onto the sidewalk on all fours. He’s too far. Sam’s too fucking far. It’s been so long and he’s lost him now.

Dean drives back to Bobby’s, thirty two years old, without Sam, without much will to keep going at all.

The sun is coming up when he gets back and Castiel is out on the porch waiting for him.

“Are we leaving?” He asks as Dean comes up the walk.

“Yeah.”

“We should tell Bobby,” Cas suggests.

Dean shakes his head passing him. “Nah, I think he’ll be happy to see us go.”

Castiel follows Dean in, waits at the bottom of the stairs as Dean comes back down with their bags. Cas’ face is concerned.

“Have I done something?” Castiel asks and Dean passes him and goes out to the car.

Castiel watches Dean, guilt creeping up into his features.

“Dean,” he starts.

“Get in the car,” Dean says, “If we’re taking, we’re talking on the road.”

That seems to be enough for Cas and he gets in on the passenger side. Dean pulls out onto the main road and they’re gone.

Three hours into the drive Castiel is the first to speak.

“Are we going to try to raise Sam?”

Dean wasn’t prepared for that and it’s like taking a pill with no water.

“No,” he answers finally.

“You want to though.”

Dean smiles mirthlessly. “Yeah.”

Castiel nods and then after a moment says quietly. “I’m not much help to you anymore, am I?”

Dean swallows and grips the wheel. “Don’t make it like that, Cas. It’s not like that.”

Castiel considers this for a moment and nods.

“Why?” Dean asks.

Castiel looks up.

“I’ve gotta ask it, Cas. I’m sorry.” Dean says, hates how betrayed he sounds. “I don’t need the reason yet if you can’t say it, I need to know if you meant for it to happen.”

Castiel looks out the windshield for a very long time and says finally, quietly, “I need to get more cigarettes.”

  
  


In Tucson, after not sleeping for two days, Castiel gets the flu. It’s hot as hell and Castiel is hotter, is shivering and sweating. He can’t keep anything down. And after the third day of Castiel throwing up sips of water, Dean starts considering taking him to a hospital.

Castiel refuses.

That night he starts babbling in the fever about Anna and Gabriel. For a while Dean _is_ Gabriel.

Dean runs Cas a hot bath and pours a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and two cups of Epson salts into the thunderous roar of running water. He strips Cas and gets him in.

“I shouldn’t leave them.” Cas mumbles staring across at the empty bottle and the Epson salt carton.

“Come on, Cas. It’ll make you sweat,” Dean says guiding Cas down until his torso is completely submerged. “We gotta break this fever.”

Castiel nods, closes his eyes.

“I feel like a burden most times now, Gabriel.” Castiel shakes his head. “Why did I do it? I let this happen.”

Dean doesn’t know what it means but Castiel looks so vulnerable Dean finds himself kneeling, leaning over, and running his fingers through Castiel’s hair. Castiel starts crying.

“It’s okay, Cas,” he hushes. “It’s Dean. I’m here.”

Castiel breaks the fever finally that night. By some luck Dean never catches the bug. They lie in bed together for a few days, Castiel curled into Dean's chest breathing softly against his skin in slumber, still weak.

It’s eleven and they’re still in bed. Dean has Top Gun on low on the TV set to keep the itch to get going down. He’s not made to sit like this. He doesn’t do well stagnant. His body is tight with how long he’s been down and out.

He needs to hunt. He knows that. He needs to get back to it and get himself ready for this last quest to Sam.

He realizes that to a certain extent it’s taken this long to break his word to his brother. It couldn’t have happened without a spiral down. It didn’t have to be Lisa. Sam would have been happy with Dean finding anyone. So the fact that he’s with Castiel now, in whatever way they are, in inconsequential. But there is no way around promising not to try to save someone and doing it anyway. Dean is going to save Sam. Or die trying. That is all there is to it.

Except that it’s not. Because he doesn’t know where that leaves Cas. Yes, Dean will do anything and has done anything for Sam. But he feels responsible here. He cares about Cas more than he cares about most anyone. He cares until it hurts.

Cas nuzzles into his shoulder and he hushes him.

But he has to do this. And that means Castiel has to choose to come with him.

They have dinner in the diner across the street. Castiel seems restless so it seems like a good idea. He orders something that was supposed to be waffles but looks more like a cake.

“I’ve got to be straight with you, Cas,” Dean says.

Castiel nods. “Of course.” He maneuvers his utensils through the pile of fried bread and whipped cream.

“I need to get back to hunting again.”

Castiel chews and watches Dean expectantly. “You want to find a way to Sam.”

Dean relinquishes that, “Yes.”

Castiel nods.

“I’m not going to be able to take you on hunts.”

Castiel’s fork has stopped moving and he waits. There is Hell in that sentence somewhere and they both hear it. There is only one hunt in there that matters.

“Are you going to be okay on your own when I go out?”

Castiel straightens, looks across the table at Dean, and Dean can see Castiel has weighed the finality in this conversation already before. This conversation is loaded and Dean can see Castiel recognizes every code here. He still holds fear in the pinch of the muscles around his lips, between his brows. He shakes his head though.

“I don’t see any other option.”

Dean doesn’t want to argue that. “Okay.”

Castiel doesn’t finish his meal.

That night, with his fingers deep in Castiel, Cas’ mouth takes over. He puts his mouth to Dean’s ear and confesses in between moans. It sounds like a confession. But it’s in Enochian and all Dean catches is “God” and “go.”

The next morning Castiel can’t stop talking about how the dreams feel real sometimes. _I was sure you left me last night on the side of the road._

Dean feels sick, because he’s wondered often if that would be better for both of them. Just to both lose one another.

Castiel has a night terror the next night. He won’t stop screaming. “I’m not here! I’m not here! Dean, I’m not here!” Dean shakes him and shakes him and when Castiel finally recognizes Dean’s there he begs, yells how he doesn’t want to be here. “This isn’t happening.”

Castiel wanders around the hotel room arguing with him until the sun comes up. “How can it be real?”

It ends with Dean pressing him and a gun against the motel wall. “You have to choose here.”

Cas’ eyes are even wider than before and glassy. “What?”

“You have to choose. I can’t choose for you, Cas.” Dean has the gun next to his shoulder where he can feel it, shifts it up to his temple and for a moment his reality shifts too. Have they been here?

Castiel swallows, now sober and still.

“Choose, Cas.” He’s not really holding the gun like he could use it, but it’s scaring him. There’s a bullet in this gun, set and ready in the chamber, and that bullet could be in Castiel’s head just as easily. And Castiel in all likelihood wants it there.

Cas takes a shuddering breath and nods, slowly places his hand over the gun at his head and pushes it away.

Dean contacts Missouri. Before he says a word she exclaims warmly, “Dean Winchester,” from the other end of the line. And then her tone shifts. “Oh, baby… oh, honey…”

It’s the softest concern he’s received since Lisa and Dean’s eyes are wet suddenly. He manages, “I need to see you.”

“This is a nice house,” Castiel says, walking up the steps and following Dean to the door.

Dean straightens Castiel’s shirt while Castiel watches perplexed. He’s suddenly hyper aware of how Cas, no matter how human, is still his responsibility now. And he should have bathed him. Castiel still forgets these things. He’s still making connections with this body.

The door opens and Missouri gives Dean the slow hug of a mother who knows her kid had a bad day.

And then she looks over at Castiel and her soft smile fades. They stare at one another, Castiel’s gaze open and serene. Missouri looks back at Dean briefly with something like disbelief and then comes back to Cas, comes close to him and casually takes his hand.

“What’s your name, honey?” She says softly.

“I’m Castiel,” he says and he’s smiling. It’s more of a smile than Dean’s seen in a long time.

“Well, Castiel, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” She keeps holding his hand while he still watches her warmly.

“Likewise.”

Dean shifts and Missouri looks over at him and then down at the ground and Dean can see she’s finding the right words to say amid all the messages she’s getting from both of them and the beyond.

“I have some rhubarb pie inside,” she says finally and then looks to both of them.

Dean is starving.

Dean and Cas sit at her dining room table and eat in silence. Missouri speaks finally.

“I know why you’re here—”

“Tell me.”

“And it’s suicide.”

Castiel is watching Dean. Dean can feel it even without looking back. It burns because he can feel the worry in it.

“You’re not going to help me.”

Missouri sighs long and loud, leans back.

“I’m gonna help you,” she says defeated. “Because I know anyone else you’re going to talk to is going to give you a bunch of nonsense that’ll do nothing but get you killed faster. At least what I tell you, I know ain’t nonsense.”

Dean nods. “Fair enough.”

She sighs again. “Your brother’s still in Hell.”

Dean nods.

“Just so we’re clear here. It took a league of angels,” she hesitates and looks over at Cas who conveniently looks at the wall, “to get you outta there. You are going to try and get in there yourself? Alone? And get you and your brother out?”

Dean is silent.

“Oh, Dean,” she says, slow and scolding, then deflated, “You best help me clean up in the kitchen. Castiel, honey, you look exhausted. There’s a guest room upstairs on the left. Go rest.”

Castiel stands and nods a thank you, leaving the room without saying a word.

The kitchen is yellow and white and the bright colors do nothing for Dean’s mood. They highlight it.

She scolds him for a long time. About his worth. About Cas. “Responsibility” is a word that gets thrown a lot, though she sugars it with concern.

Dean barely moves for ten minutes listening to her.

“You can’t see that you’re killing him too, can you?” She says finally, pauses. “You dying to get Sam out. You can’t see past the fall.”

Dean takes a deep breath and it’s like he hasn’t breathed this whole time. Arguments run through his head about Sam taking care of him, or Cas being fine, but he can’t voice them. Because he knows just how badly equipped he is to fight a psychic.

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

She watches him so long he starts to wonder if she’ll ever speak to him again. But then she sighs and shakes her head. “I’ll ask around.” She starts washing the dishes. “If there’s a chance of you surviving this, I’ll tell you what I can. Otherwise you’re on your own.”

Dean walks up the stairs, stops halfway, and sits until his breathing doesn’t sound like he’s hurting.

Missouri comes to him in the early hours of the morning, pulls him out of the bed next to Cas and down onto the floor. She hushes him to not wake the angel.

“It’s clear now.” She says it frantically, fist holding his shirt. “Now, you have to go now.” Her hair is a mess and she’s still in her clothes. She obviously hasn’t slept.

“Missouri,” Dean stammers but she shakes her head and pushes a piece of paper into his hand.

“That’s all I got.” She pats his cheek. “But it’s enough.”

Castiel and Dean in the Impala on a cliff overlooking the sea. There is a portal below, invisible. A tear in this reality that goes straight to a corner of Hell.

Terrifyingly, it turns out they’re opening and closing all over the universe all the time.

And Dean is about to drive down into one.

“Lovers Lane,” Cas muses out loud.

Dean’s cold all over, has the sick empty finality of his life’s meaning pulling him down into yet another symbolic pile of bullshit and he’s just so fucking tired of it all.

“Or that one movie with the two women,” Castiel tries quieter.

Castiel fiddles with the hem of his shirt. A habit Dean’s gotten sort of fond of watching him do. Cas never seemed to think about his clothes until they started having sex. He can’t seem to figure them out now.

And he’s asking if this is a romantic death. It’s turned romantic and tragic now, hasn’t it? How did they get here? How did it go this far? It feels like it’s always had to come here. From the moment Castiel came back, from the moment Sam didn’t, this has been the end point. Somehow they stalled it for a while. But here they are.

Dean clears his throat. “You don’t have to, Cas.”

Castiel looks over, but doesn’t meet Dean’s eye. He fights speaking for a moment before Dean interrupts him.

“You don’t have to say anything, Cas, I get it.” Dean eyes Castiel’s cigarette pack in his shirt pocket and motions.

Castiel hands one over and Dean lights up. Dad’s not here to scold. No one to disappoint here. And in all likelihood he won’t have to live through the withdrawl.

He opens the window, apologizes in his head to his car for the upholstery, but figures since she’ll be at the bottom of the Pacific or possibly in Hell in the next minute or two, what’s a little smoke damage?

When Castiel doesn’t move, Dean speaks.

“I don’t want you to come with me.” Dean breathes it out, tasting the tar. “I can’t do it.”

Castiel does meet his eyes this time.

“Get out of my car, Cas.”

“No.”

“Cas,” Dean warns. “I will beat the crap out of you before I send you into Hell.”

Castiel looks like he’s still able to smite suddenly.

“They’d have a hell of a lot more fun with an ex-angel than with me.” It didn’t sound as frantic in his head as out of his mouth. “Cas...”

Castiel looks angrier than Dean’s seen him in a very long time. He’s so still with it, it’s unearthly.

“But I’m running out of time here. So you gotta get out of my car. Or I _will_ beat the crap out of you.”

Castiel looks like he might strike first, but he leans in. Dean can’t breathe, Cas is kissing him so hard.

“You don’t get to decide this,” Castiel growls breathlessly. “Now, go.” Cas puts his hand on the steering wheel next to Dean’s hand. “Go!”

No one is there to witness it. There is the screech of tire on gravel, the plummet, the fall.

And then nothing.

Too late.

  
  


Sam stands outside Lisa and Dean’s house looking in on a peaceful life. Out of Hell and uninterested in why, he walks off.

The night is loud with crickets.

Castiel watches the scene from farther back, invisible. He tries to pinpoint why he feels what he feels. He’s thankful for the vision, but he’s haunted by it all the same.

He almost did it. He almost left.

This is the choice he wouldn’t have made if he’d left like he planned.

Dean looks out the window, looks right at him, unseeing.

It would be better if he didn’t know how Dean felt, but he does.

And that’s the real sacrifice. The real loss.

This is the real beginning and it’s a step in the opposite direction. It’s turning around and walking away and not looking back.

**Author's Note:**

> INDEPTH CONTENT WARNINGS - sex, suicidal ideations and possible attempt/overdose, self-harm, drug abuse, smoking, alcoholism, intoxicated driving, unreality, unhealthy relationships, illness, threat of gun violence, psychosis, infidelity, grief, a few instances of vomiting, and **(ENDING SPOILERS)**  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> multiple timelines/endings - one with implied character deaths and another that is canon for events in Season 6 but filled with unresolved pining.
> 
> ALSO I can't believe I'm typing this because it probably goes without saying, but times are scary - DO NOT use the method described to break a fever without a doctor's okay. I love him, but my Dean's an idiot here.<3


End file.
